They sneaked past the library door, past the chair where their great-grandfather spent his days dozing when he wasn’t making pronouncements about fates; past the office in which their father and his brothers spent their days counting and recounting the gold and silver brought in by the O’Malleys’ mercantile empire, planning and plotting and strategising to make more; past the solar where the great-grandmother, grandmother, and aunts spent their days in embroidery and schemes as women will when forced to sit idly by.
It was only when they moved through the great subterranean kitchens that the children’s stealth came adrift. A single scullion caught sight of them, a girl thin and curious, and she followed. At a distance, she followed, but follow she did. Through the potager, then the gardens proper, trees and shrubs, flowerbeds, past wells ornamental and true, past the folly built only last year to look like a small ship because the great-grandfather had an obsession with such things. She was cold, for she’d not thought to put on a coat, but she still followed, lips taking on a blueish tinge, fingers turning numb so she had to rub them against each other and bury them in her armpits to keep them from cramping entirely. She followed them as they came to the cliff edge, to the spot where the switchback path began.
O’Malley children had no fear of rain or grey skies, and no fear of the sea either for they learned to swim almost before they could walk. But they were careful on land, found it somehow treacherous the way it sometimes gave way without warning, when it promised such solidity. So the children were wary as they took the path down to the pebble-strewn cove.
But when they reached the beach, their steps were sure once again: closer to the water, they were more certain. Behind them, the maid struggled, trying hard not to trip, to make any sound that might alert her quarry, but by that time they were nearer to their objective and focused utterly on that.
They came at last, did the children, to the sea cave, cut deep into dark layers of basalt. The tide was out for Gráinne had paid attention to the hour when she sent her children away, but the entrance was still so small, hardly more than a gap in the rock, as if a mighty hand had pulled the stone up in a curve as easily as a drape of fabric. Aislin got down on her knees and, after the smallest hesitation – it wasn’t fear, no, you couldn’t call it fear, more a considered caution – crawled inside, followed swiftly by her brother who suffered no such qualms.
And the maid waited, not daring to pursue, and feeling that somehow she’d made an ill choice in giving in to her curiosity.
It was dark, the space they squirmed through, damp and close and smelling of dead things the sea had claimed and wouldn’t let go. Just when it seemed they’d crawl forever, when Aislin was sure the darkness would suffocate them, a weak gleam showed up ahead and a voice trickled through to them. A voice so sweet that it drew them on, made Aislin forget she’d ever thought about trying to turn back. Surely, there was treasure here, just as their mother had promised.
When Aislin and Connor could stand once again, they found themselves in a cave most assuredly, although they couldn’t say how far they’d gone; Aislin had a sense that the path had begun to slope down at some point. The area into which they stepped was large, large as the formal dining room at the manor twice over, two-thirds filled with black water, the other third a sandy bottom so soft their boots sank. The only source of light was the algae growing on the walls, which glowed a blue-green, made their faces look sickly, and showed the creature that still sang as it lay in the shallows, part-in and part-out of the liquid obsidian.
The woman’s bottom half couldn’t be seen, but Aislin sensed movement in the water, a shift of the fluid caused by the press of something powerful, teasingly silver just like a hint or a taste of truth. The creature – woman, surely, for it was broad-shouldered, heavy-breasted, with long ropes of sable hair with pearls braided into them. But Aislin couldn’t quell the suspicion that the woman – thing – was much bigger than any person she’d ever seen, even amongst her tall family. The mouth was wide and filled with sharp teeth, the nose a little flat, the nostrils a little high, the eyes big and black with no white at all, but she clearly saw the children, for she smiled with that wide mouth and beckoned them closer. It – she – stopped singing and the sweet echoes dropped from a ceiling so high it was lost in shadows, dropped and dripped and trickled down to make ripples in the surface of the pond.
Aislin thought she’d never seen anything stranger or more beautiful, but she stayed where she was, the silver bell
